Facebook call for help leads to rescue of 85-year-old

Posted 6:28 p.m.

A warm cup of tea. That’s all 85-year-old Margaret Reuter wanted after being plucked up in a Blackhawk helicopter from her flooded Meyerland neighborhood and transported to George R. Brown Convention Center.

She had been through hell by all accounts, but there she was sitting in front of Starbucks sipping a cup of tea when her family arrived.

“What took you so long?” she said in a rich Scottish accent, barely 5 feet tall and soaking wet.

Her story was like many on that day when the bayou water spilled into Meyerland, as it had done before.

This time seemed much worse. It wouldn’t stop raining.

Her son, Keith, who lived miles away, attempted to drive in to rescue her. He couldn’t get close enough so, he took to foot, wading through the chest-high water.

Reuter was inside of the house with water closing in on her. She wasn’t real steady on her feet, so getting to the roof was not an option.

As this was unfolding, her daughter, Mary Beth, and her wife, Shana Ross, were in their Heights home on Facebook frantically trying to get help. A friend responded, saying she had a nephew whose wife’s brother was a rescue swimmer with the Texas Task Force 1 Urban Search and Rescue team, which had teamed with the Blackhawk military helicopter rescue team. It was a long shot, Ross thought. The swimmer, Lt. Matthew Gellar, who is also a Dallas firefighter, responded to the friend on Facebook that he and his team were in the area on rescue missions.

The next Facebook note Ross got was that Gellar was on his way.

“I broke into tears,” Ross said. “I wasn’t relieved I was hopeful. Until you touch them, you don’t have relief. I was glued to Facebook. I felt like I had set up my own Facebook command center.”

Then she got the note: “Five minutes away.”

About this time, Keith had finally reached his mother and was on the phone with sister, Mary Beth, when he heard a helicopter overhead.

“That’s for her!” Mary Beth screamed through the phone.

As the rain poured, Keith and the rescue crew maneuvered Margaret into the basket.

She wasn’t scared, but the noise hurt her ears, she later told her family as she sipped her tea.